+. THE PLANTATIONS. 357 
district. Organised recruitment is prohibited in Nepal, but voluntary 
migration continues in spite of restrictions. Over 90%, of the workers 
live on the gardens and many of them have lived there from their 
birth. A few of the gardens in the Terai which are on the foot-hills 
also employ Nepali labour, but generally the composition of the labour 
force and the methods of recruitment are much the same as in the 
Dooars. 
The Dooars. 
The cultivation of tea extends from Darjeeling to the Dooars 
(or strictly the Western Dooars) which is a submontane country, twenty- 
two miles in width, between the Tista and Sankosh rivers and between 
Bhutan on the north and Cooch Bihar on the south. The cultivation 
of tea spread rapidly in the Dooars, and by 1907 most of the available 
land suitable for tea had already been taken up. About 126,000 labour- 
ers are employed, most of whom are aboriginals from Chota Nagpur 
and the Santal Parganas in the province of Bihar and Orissa. The 
significant feature of recruitment for the Dooars has been the absence 
of any form of agreement or penal contract. - Although labour is obtained 
from a considerable distance, the planters did not desire the application 
of the almost ubiquitous Workmen's Breach of Contract Act to this 
area. We believe that it is the absence of penal contracts, as much as 
any other factor, which has been responsible for the comparative absence 
here of the serious difficulties which have attended recruiting for the 
neighbouring province of Assam. At no time has it been necessary for 
Government to control recruitment for the Dooars, and except for short 
periods, the planters have been able to secure an adequate supply of 
labour; most of which is permanently settled on the gardens, only about 
ten per cent returning annually to their homes. The method of recruit- 
ment is mainly the same sardari system as is prescribed for Assam, but is 
subiect to no official control. 
Accam. 
Assam is by far the most important planting area in the whole 
of India, and the tea gardens in this province alone employ more than 
half the total number of labourers employed on the plantations in British 
India. Tea is grown only in the lowlands, which form two valley areas. 
The northern, running just under and parallel to the Himalaya, is the 
valley of the Brahmaputra, known locally as the Assam valley, and fre- 
quently referred to in other parts of the province simply as “ Assam ”. 
It is a long valley, generally narrow and flat, and while tea gardens 
are to be found in all its six districts, nearly all the gardens lie in the four 
upper districts of Lakhimpur, Sibsagar, Nowgong and Darrang, in sub- 
stantial parts of which tea gardens are almost continuous. The southern 
valley, known as the Surma valley, is a wider and much shorter basin, 
receiving a number of streams from three sides, which meet in the 
Barak, a river joining the Brahmaputra in Bengal. In this valley the 
bea gardens lie in a number of separate areas occupying low elevations 
or flat lands within the two districts of Cachar and Sylhet. The Assam